Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes Sept 9 2009

By midsummer 2,000 have arrived in Chichester and Pagham harbours. A lot of these go on to Normandy, western France and Africa, while more arrive from Scotland and Lapland. By September 3,000 fill the creeks and mudflats and saltings of Sussex.

Here most will stay until the moors call them back again in March. Throughout Britain about 150,000 curlews over-winter. They have one of the wildest and most beautiful calls of all birds.

Although this is at its best on the breeding grounds, I often hear this song here in winter too, especially in autumn and early spring.

The bubbling song carries half a mile in still air. It descends the scale, even as the male bird glides in descending flight, and the bubbling becomes a quavering ripple that gradually relapses to a murmur.

He then lands with wings arched over his back, his long fine down-curved beak closed and his eye black and bright as he stands quite satisfied with such a splendid aria. Summertime on the moors would not be the same without such a sound-track.

Film companies often add the signature to their stories set in wild places, even as they add the scream of vixens to their mystery yarns.

The books tell you that the curlew's song is only heard from January to September inclusive, but I think I have heard it in every month.

Now that winters are more open, that is. You would certainly not hear any curlew singing in severe winters. Their social calls are what most people will hear however.

This is the call he makes as he shouts his name: "curlee", the call rising in tone.

This is a marvellous consonance with wide open spaces, the very wildness of wilderness.

Many times Londoners have heard this calling from the inscrutable night sky above while they stood among the alien pavements, as the birds passed over them on migration.

It is a haunting yet romantic call. The bird has several other cries as well, which were but descriptions of their calls. So many years ago curlews were called Whaups, also Whittericks.

These simply describe the two warning calls the birds give when they see danger.

I suppose you used to hear it more in the old days when the birds were shot on our marshes for food.

The mere sight of a human would cause this shuddering, staccato bark, almost a scream.

Actually there is not much meat on a curlew, it is a stringy old bird and fowlers used to cut out the breast meat which was a bit like two slices of corned beef.

A terrible waste of a bird really, when instead you could enjoy at least several months of fine singing and yodelling.